“We both know that’s doubtful. We covered our tracks carefully.”
Thad was right. Both of us had done some thorough cleaning behind that mess so it didn’t resurface. But somehow it had.
“What did she say when you asked her?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Why wouldn’t you ask where she got his name from?”
“It’s a little complicated.”
“Shit, Kean. Now isn’t the time to think with your dick.”
I stood and began to pace around Thad’s office as I flexed my hands.
When Ciaran mentioned the doctor’s name I’d lost it, mainly because it was the last thing I expected to come from her soft little mouth. I had assumed she had shown up to request a repeat of what had happened at the restaurant, which I wasn’t about to grant her no matter how badly she begged. Though, I wanted to hear her beg. Instead I lost control of my temper. My hand had fit too quickly around her neck. Too easily. Just as easily as my tongue had slipped inside her.
“I wasn’t thinking with my damn dick, Thad. She fucking caught me off guard when she threw his name out.”
We both stayed quiet for a while. I could almost hear Thad thinking.
“Look, we will figure out who is behind all this, but you need to keep your distance from her. She is a journalist. One word of this gets out and you’re fucking screwed.”
I stopped pacing and sat back down, having decided not to tell him I may have already crossed that line. It was bad enough I was going to have to bring up Whitman.
“There’s another problem.”
Thad uncrossed his arms and leaned back in his chair.
“I saw Ciaran with Stuart Whitman at a restaurant. I was able to corner her and ask how they knew each other. She said they worked together at the magazine.”
“And you were holding this back from me?” Thad appeared calm on the outside but I knew his temper was simmering just below the surface.
“I wasn’t holding anything back. I just hadn’t gotten around to mentioning it yet.”
“Kind of important stuff not to mention. Whitman poses a problem and I will look into him. What I need to know is if you believe the journalist?”
I licked my bottom lip recalling how sweet Ciaran tasted on my tongue.
Seeing her with Whitman had infuriated me. As I’d watched her at the table that night, I had tried to put my finger on why she was drawing such a reaction from me when it suddenly dawned on me why she had seemed so familiar when I had seen her in my office. Ciaran Thompson was the woman in the baseball cap at the café, the blonde woman on the treadmill at the gym. Sipping her wine, she looked different but I knew it was her. I felt it. It was the way she carried herself and the look in her eyes that gave her away. She had been stalking me for days.
I was so pissed I hadn’t caught on earlier, I decided to screw with her. I wanted to aggravate her, set her off, scare her away. I wanted to unravel her.
When Ciaran stormed away from the table, I knew my manipulations had been successful. I followed her into the hallway and pulled her into the cleaning closet to demand answers. It was the unexpected jealousy in her tone when she assumed I had been fingering Tracie under the table that threw me off course.
I had to steal a kiss from her and it fucked me over. Every fucking inch of her was so soft. So pliable. I immediately wanted to know what she tasted like everywhere. The second I got a taste of her arousal whatever was left of my initial plan to scare her away changed course. And as soon as she had climaxed, she looked at me with her soulful eyes filled with hope, and I realized she was more dangerous than she appeared. I knew I had to stay away from her.
“I’m not sure,” I finally answered.
“Yeah, no shit. I could have told you that the minute you got quiet. I’ll look into both of them but you need to keep your distance. Kean, you need to be careful.”
I stood to leave. “I’m always careful. Besides I have you watching my back.” I picked up my laptop bag from the floor by my feet and placed the strap on my shoulder. As I headed to the door, I could feel Thad’s eyes boring into me.
“Kean.”
He was standing behind his desk when I turned.
“I meant with the girl. Be careful. You don’t know where she surfaced from or what she wants.”
That’s where he was wrong. I did know what she wanted.
It was a story I wasn’t willing to give her.
Chapter Thirteen
Ciaran
“These team building events suck the big one,” Brenda muttered.
I raised my glass to my lips as I stifled a laugh. We were standing in the bar area of Jack’s, a sports bar, while we waited for our large group to be seated.
At the front of the room, Shawna was giving a speech about teamwork but we weren’t listening. Brenda and I were too busy making snide remarks as we guzzled down drinks.
A couple of years back, the department staff ran into issues playing nicely with each other so Shawna introduced mandatory team building dinners to smooth things over. They translated into fake conversations among co-workers eager to crawl up the boss’s ass over free food and drinks. Brenda referred to them as a quick slap-and-tickle, office style.
Normally the optimistic one, I had recently reached a new limit with the magazine. Along with Stuart and my boss, everything about it was grating on my last nerve.
Maybe I was just tired. I had spent the majority of the afternoon attempting to rewrite my draft and leave out any abrasive language against Kean, but the only thing I accomplished was to delete several paragraphs of it.
The information Gloria had produced kept rolling around in my brain. It viciously clashed with Kean’s brutish behavior when I mentioned Dr. Duarte, not to mention his nasty demeanor at the restaurant. Still, she saw a side of the man no one else saw. At this point, I didn’t think I wanted to know any side of him, even from a distance.
A waiter approached holding a tray full of drinks. “Who ordered the red-headed slut and a whiskey sour?”
“We did. Mine is the whiskey sour and my friend here prefers red-headed sluts,” Brenda piped up, grinning from ear to ear.
Once we had our drinks in hand, Brenda made a toast. “Here is to a much-needed night of booze and to hell with deadlines, brown-nosers, and men with tiny dicks.”
She had to mention dicks. I clinked my red-headed-slut against her glass while I tried not to think of the not-so-tiny dick that had been pressed against my hip. I took a swig of my drink just as Stuart walked up. “Did I miss anything?”
“Not a thing,” I replied frostily.
I was still fuming over how Stuart had held back information about Kean. It lowered my opinion of him, which was a shame because Stuart actually looked good in the button-down shirt and dark jeans he had on.
An idea suddenly came to mind.
Facing Stuart, I flashed him the most flirtatious smile I could conjure up. He grinned as he took the bait, reaching out with the back of his hand to run it affectionately over my cheek.
A jostle from my opposite side threw me a bit off balance.
“Whatcha doing, Ciaran?” Brenda asked in a singsong voice.
“Just humoring Stuart,” I responded under my breath so only she could hear.
Brenda had been so busy with her article, I hadn’t gotten the chance to fill her in on all the drama I was having with mine.
Leaning over to look at Stuart, Brenda gave me a thumb up. “Humoring can be a good thing.”
I was shoving her thumb back down when Stuart’s cell phone rang.
“I’ll be right back. I have to take this,” he explained and took off towards the bar’s lobby.
“Well, about fucking time.” Brenda sighed. “He has been dying to bang you for months.”
I picked a piece of imaginary lint from my shirt. I wanted to explain banging wasn’t exactly where I was going with this but there were too many co-workers around that would love to get ahold of some juicy gossip.